Contrary to modern operating systems, FreeDOS or MS-DOS itself has no use or purpose for sound drivers.
The DOS games themselves come with sound drivers build-in. They come with drivers for sound devices that were relevant at the time. Like Adlib, GM on MPU and Sound Blaster through the ISA bus. With emphasis on ISA bus.
AC97 is on the PCI bus. It was not designed to work for legacy DOS software. One of the very few DOS programs to be able to access sound hardware through the PCI bus is MPXplay.
(There may be some DOS TSR contraption to reroute sound to AC-97 somewhere, but it will surely be troublesome.)

interesting i am willing to give MPXplay a try do you by any chance know where I can get it??

DJSylv3on wrote:

interesting i am willing to give MPXplay a try do you by any chance know where I can get it??

Mpxplay v1.63 DOS/32
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/mpxplay/MP … 3D.ZIP?download

Mpxplay v1.63 DOS/4G
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/mpxplay/MP … 3G.ZIP?download

gerwin wrote:

Contrary to modern operating systems, FreeDOS or MS-DOS itself has no use or purpose for sound drivers. The DOS games themselve […]
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Contrary to modern operating systems, FreeDOS or MS-DOS itself has no use or purpose for sound drivers.
The DOS games themselves come with sound drivers build-in. They come with drivers for sound devices that were relevant at the time. Like Adlib, GM on MPU and Sound Blaster through the ISA bus. With emphasis on ISA bus.
AC97 is on the PCI bus. It was not designed to work for legacy DOS software. One of the very few DOS programs to be able to access sound hardware through the PCI bus is MPXplay.
(There may be some DOS TSR contraption to reroute sound to AC-97 somewhere, but it will surely be troublesome.)

DOS is less an operating system than a file system. Most other aspects of low level hardware access are left to the user program.

Yes, MPXPlay will support most sound hardware, even modern stuff.

But if you want sound in games, etc. - the way it has to be done is to have a "driver" that basically emulates a Creative Sound Blaster on top of the modern sound hardware. This is theoretically possible (and was done for a lot of PCI sound cards back in the day), but very impractical and it is unlikely anyone will put in the hard work required to make it happen.

The reason it would have to be done this way is because most things in DOS are direct hardware access, as others said above. So most programs would support hardware directly, and the most commonly supported sound card was the Sound Blaster. Most sound cards from the 90's would sport some sort of Sound Blaster compatibility, until the rise of Windows meant that it wasn't important any more.

Not a lot of options for DOS sound on that laptop, did you try DosBox before removing XP?

BinaryDemon wrote:

Not a lot of options for DOS sound on that laptop, did you try DosBox before removing XP?

if you mean testing SB16 emu on it yes and it worked fine

problem is one of the games no matter what you do runs super slow due to compat issues

😵

Dude, this is actually a horrible laptop for DOS gaming.

Get something from the 90's.

The only way you are going to get games to play sound from DOS on that thing is with a PCMCIA sound card that has DOS support. Good luck finding one. They tend to not pop up very often, and when they do, they are pretty expensive.

And there are even less out there that support both digital and FM in DOS.

The other option is to MAYBE use a PCMCIA to PCI expansion chassis and then use a PCI sound card that supports DOS... but that is going to cost a pretty penny as well.

Another option is to get a USB to ISA adapter and use the special version of DOSBOX that the same company made so you can use an ISA sound card through DOSBOX with the adapter.
http://arstech.com/install/ecom-prodshow/usb2isar.html

I have a couple of the 3-slot ones but still need to get power adapters for them.

That will set you back a pretty penny as well.

Judging by the specs, you should be able to run Win98 on that. Getting DOS sound emulation under Win98 depends on the driver for the sound chip, but it might be an option.

keenmaster486 wrote:

Dude, this is actually a horrible laptop for DOS gaming.

Get something from the 90's.

I am working with what I have dude may not be the greatest to work with but also got it for free

xjas wrote:

Judging by the specs, you should be able to run Win98 on that. Getting DOS sound emulation under Win98 depends on the driver for the sound chip, but it might be an option.

I will keep that in mind

Here are AC97 and HD Drivers for windows 3.x

http://turkeys4me.byethost4.com/programs/index.htm

With a SoftMidi Synth you can also get MIDI Support on windows 3.x

but for DOS ? there only few programs supporting AC97 until some one hacks a Driver like Virtual Soundblaster together 😁

Another Option maybe would to add a LPT Port but i don`t know if Express and PCMCIA LPT Ports are recognized by BIOS/EFI so that you can use them under DOS..

That eventually would allow using a OPL3LPT from Serdaco.

matze79 wrote:

Another Option maybe would to add a LPT Port but i don`t know if Express and PCMCIA LPT Ports are recognized by BIOS/EFI so that you can use them under DOS..

That eventually would allow using a OPL3LPT from Serdaco.

For DOS, you have to have a driver for the PCMCIA slot chipset. Not sure about an Express slot. And even then, you would probably need a DOS driver for the card itself.